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FW: comments

Released on 2012-09-11 13:00 GMT

Email-ID

2100896

Date

2011-02-20 04:12:03

From

l.i.omar@durham.ac.uk

To

sam@alshahba.com, l.omar@mopa.gov.sy

My dearest sponsor ever,
Good morning to you.

How sweet of you to keep on supporting me in every possible way, making my life easier and more equipped with means of knowledge and ways to progress. I very deeply thankful and appreciative for all you do, and I pray God I am worth all your help and
time.

The following email is a reply from my direct supervisor to my latest follow up on my academic work. I know it is too much for your precious and dear time. It is just for the record no more nor less. I sincerely apologize for stuffing your email with
unnecessary content; however, I feel it is my responsibility to keep you enlightened about my research project since, without your support, I would not be able to make a single step on the road to liberty of the mind and soul.

I reiterate my hearty gratitude and wish you a most bright and wonderful day,

Sincerely forever,

----------------------------
Lamis Ismail Omar
Part-time PhD Research
The Translation of Metaphor in
Shakespeare'sDrama into Arabic
School of Modern Language and Cultures
Durham University, the United Kingdom
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First of all my apologies for getting back to you with some delay, due, in part, to the amount of material to be digested and secondly to circumstances beyond my control.
I have read your submissions with great interest. In view of the astound number, I think it politic to list all the files here (in random order), just to make sure that I haven't missed anything (and to boost morale for both author and reader!;-)):
(1) A Descriptive Report of Data Collection and Quantification in Othello’s Metaphorical Patterns;
(2) Annex (I) Contextualized Mapping of Metaphors in Othello;
(3) Annex (II) Decontextualized Metaphoric Patterns in Othello;
(4) Excel (I) Word Frequency in Othello’s Metaphoric Patterns;
(5) Excel (II) Word Frequency of Source Domain Concepts;
(6) Excel (III) Word Frequency of Target Domain Concepts;
(7) Conceptual Fields Tag Cloud;
(8) Source Domain Tag Cloud;
(9) Target Domain Tag Cloud;
(10) Bibliography of the References Cited in Annex (I) on Contextualized Mapping of Metaphors in Othello;
(11) Macbeth bibliography;
(12) Translations of Shakespeare in Arabic;
(13) Preliminary statistics of metaphor analysis in Macbeth;
(14) Overview of research contents, methodology, etc.;
(15) Contextualized metaphoric mappings in Macbeth;
(16) Bibiliography of Othello experimental study;
(17) Revised section on metaphoric Shakespeare.

In addition to annotations in (some of the) files, here are some general points that, I believe, merit attention:

(1): As a taster of what is to come, this section holds out great promise and already affords significant insights into Shakespeare’s metaphoric workings. I can hardly wait to see what this will yield across all plays and, especially, in Arabic, which, of
course, will be the thrust of your work.

(2)-(15): I’m taking these two together because they purport to do the same thing for different plays (Othello and Macbeth). Very interesting analysis. The first thing that strikes me, however, is that (2) lacks a column that is present in the other, that
is, ‘type of metaphor’. Is there any particular reason for this? Of course, this is very much a work in progress and so I’m just wondering whether you intend to add this afterwards.
Some things (see file attached) are not quite clear to me. For instance, (in (15) I am a bit puzzled by the entries in the 'types of metaphor' column: e.g. are 'Biblical reference', 'animal attribute' and 'simile' on the same footing, since the former is
origin, the second component and the third a type of trope. To complicate matters even more, 'idiom' is also included, whereas sometimes you use the same column for glosses (e.g. p. 35, "‘great doom’s image’ is metonymy of ‘Duncan’s murder’"). This is
further borne out by the fact that in (2), we find ‘Biblical reference’ and ‘personification’ added to the quotations column.
Some of the source and target domains also need to be re-checked carefully.
At times, the context does not really make clear the domains (e.g. what is the MAGIC in 'fair is foul, and foul is fair'?). The labelling of the categories, themselves, can also be confusing: e.g. what do you mean by 'strongly resonant'? This implies
qualification is there for all of the types?
The ordering of the various entries is not always clear either, which may, of course, simply be a computer issue.
A practical question: this is less than a third of the ultimate analysis: will you include all these tables in the thesis? This is all the more important since so much still needs to be done for the analysis on the English side, whereas allof it on the
Arabic source texts has yet to start.

(7)-(8)-(9): these semantic 'clouds' are a very interesting way, indeed, to highlight the relevant relationships and status within the various domains. One question, though; as it stands the presentation 'undersells' the possible illustrative use; will
they just be inserted as is?

(10): I presume this bibliography will be subsumed in the general list of references, and was sent just for clarification? In terms of presentation, the following should be amended to bring it in line with prevailing practice: each reference should end in
a full stop; the authors' names should not be indented (subsequent lines often are); italicize, rather than underline, titles of books (underlining dates back to the typewriter era when this was used instead of italics which characters were not commonly
available).

(11): Please revise the presentation of the entries which is often inconsistent: part only of the title underlined (?); journal articles enclosed in inverted commas and underlined (?); no full stops (!). (also see comments in previous point). Please don't
think I'm being pedantic here, but inconsistency can be quite confusing (as well as annoying!). Also, the use of referencing software means that this can be easily and effectively remedied.

(12): Can you remind me where you decided, in the end, to place this section? There are a number of comments here, most of which I have included in the file (attached). One general point involves chronology, and the absence of dates is sometimes a bit
confusing. I would also have expected to find out at least the names of the past translators (you mention a few way at the end), as well as the idea behind the project for the translation of all of Shakespeare,... On another note, you perhaps overstate
the place of Shakespearean translation within the general body of Arabic translations of European literature. Presentation-wise, there is the mystifying use of italics for proper nouns. Also, the transliteration is sometimes inconsistent and/or whimsical.
Finally, here we have a third referencing system in the bibliography, but still no full stops!

(13) this is highly interesting and I look forward to a further development and amplification, since as it stands there is too little there in order to provide meaningful feedback.

(14):
-This is a very helpful overview of the thesis, indeed and looks very sound. The most salient point here is one that I have already raised with you previously, i.e. symmetry across the various chapters: as it stands, there are three literature review
chapters, which added with the Introduction (chap. 1), leaves two chapters to deal with the actual topic (I'm disregarding the Methodology chapter here, which falls in between the two, in a manner of speaking). Note that I have no problem whatsoever with
the proposed content of each chapter since the way in which everything is developed is coherent and in line with the research questions and hypotheses to be addressed. The concern is that either you have four short chapters and two 'megachapters', or you
will run out of words before being able to tackle the actual analyses and processing. Could you, therefore, (now that things have crystallized some more) add the percentages that each chapter would take up?
-Another point involves the phrasing of the research questions; it is rather striking, to say the least, that none of them includes a reference to Shakespeare/Shakespearean metaphor, which is the actual subject of the dissertation! And it is this through
this analysis that answers to more general questions can be extrapolated.
In addition, I don't much like the fact that the four 'introductory' chapters are untitled, and simply numbered (sc. 'Literature Review' I, II, III).
-Whilst I have no problem with your restricting the focus to creative metaphoric structures, I do have some questions about your proposed changes to the corpus, which, if memory, serves would result in the following: three (instead of four) ST tragedies
and four TTs (as opposed to seven). Firstly, which ones were you thinking of sacrificing, and which criteria, if any, did you apply? Secondly, you mention overlaps, but it is not clear in my mind what these would entail as they vary (one overlap across
three translators, and two across two).

(17): However, some bits read too much like a literature summary-cum-review (rather than as a framework to be applied), whereas the 'linear' -- i.e. analytical, rather than synthetic' -- presentation should perhaps be revised. I also expected to find
definitions of the various types of Shakespearean metaphor that you will use in the analysis. On the other hand, it, of course, depends on where this section will eventually find a home, and my comments here might be redundant! The section ends rather
abruptly, almost in mid-argument/thought! Presentation of bibliography again not consistent!

I hope that the above comments and the annotations in the files are helpful and clear.
Please do not hesitate to contact me should you require further elucidation.